I am a long time candy cab (Super Neo 29, Hyper Neo 29, 2x Q25s, Blast City, AWSD)/US cab (various) owner but I recently acquired a couple pachinkos. I am handy with cab maintenance and I'm pretty sure I've figured out how everything works and what the components do, and have taken apart, cleaned, and reassembled this first pachinko:

The game plays well, and I've got around 1000 balls (came with the two pachinkos), but I find I have to keep going into the ball return to dump balls back into the front tray, and I'm looking for a better way to manage the balls for home use.

It looks to have a credit display on the front here, and on the back on the lower right hand side there is a serial port with nothing connected to it. I've seen some threads here referring to a Daverob dongle that from what I gather connects to this port and emulates being connected to a card/credit system for letting you cash in credits for balls dispensed from the reward hopper. Is this worthwhile, or does it really just deplete the reward hopper quickly and create its own problem? I would imagine to get real value out of it you need to have a lifter to recycle the balls from the ball return into the reward hopper. This seems like an expensive option.

I was considering as an alternative cheaper option, building a platform to mount the pachinko to that adds a stable base and also lifts the machine high enough to put a long tray under. The idea being that the tray would reach all the way to the back to catch the balls coming out of the return, and be tilted slightly so that these balls would roll to the front of the machine so that you could easily grab them and dump them back into play.

Is this just a matter of preference? What do you guys think? Would I also just benefit from another 500-1000 balls in general? What have you all done and found gave you the best result for home play?

Also, I have this pedestal that I'd like to keep the pachinko on. It lights up on the inside to illuminate the back glass, has a built in power strip inside to run the power cord for a slot (or whatever), and has a side drink holder, so I have no interest in wall mounting the pachinko. I'm not opposed to building an enclosure for it though to make the base look nicer.

I just picked up a Sankyo Hi-Performance, Hi-Tech machine. That's about all I know about it. It's in pretty good shape but I couldn't get the auto shooter to function. Since the machine is modular, it was pretty easy to take apart. I've restored lots of vintage machines so I figured I'd couldn't get into too much trouble!

It is now much cleaner (although I'll do a more thorough job later) and the auto shooter works sporadically. Sometimes it won't shoot at all and other times it just goes crazy. No consistency. I noticed there is a red light by the lock that lights when you twist the shooter know. That is also flaky.

Everything else seems to work. All the pay pockets and features function with sound.

Any ideas on what to do? Does it need a new motor? I don't think there are any dirty contacts since I did a cleaning, but I might have missed one.
If I need a motor, does anybody have one for this model?

These machines are not in the best of shape as they found them all in a house that was abandoned for the past 15 years or so. Which is unfortunate as I would have loved to know the story of how someone acquired all these machines out in the middle of nowhere. (Literally the middle of nowhere, had to drive on gravel roads for a few miles to get there.) Some have water damage and rot so they are for parts. There are a few which we believe are functional and will try to get working and post for sale in the coming months.

There was mainly 2 types of machines the Nishijin Frame and the Sankyo frame. Most were still covered with plastic bags and have new plexiglass (was new some years ago). I'll eventually be posting some more pictures of the machines. So if anyone needs parts for a certain machine please contact me. We can work something out.